[ MSFS2020 | VATSIM ] 4,000 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY NIGHT in the BAe146, KMSP-KORD-KPIT!

In recognition of the recent livestream milestone of surpassing 4,000 Twitch followers, tonight we embarked upon a celebration "Whiskey Friday"-style in the JustFlight BAe146 during the "Northern Crossings VII" Friday Night Ops event! Minneapolis, Chicago, and Cleveland all had their major facilities staffed to the nines and so we elected for a two-hop trip from Minneapolis (KMSP) to O'Hare (KORD) then on to Pittsburgh (KPIT).
The route for our first leg included non-RNAV departures and arrivals, and we waited with bated breath to see whether the Clearance Delivery controller at Minneapolis would attempt to alter it. Often, Clearance is manned by the least senior VATSIM controllers, and they often aren't experienced seeing routes which differ from the most commonly used real-world ones. This time, though, we were pleased to see it was left as we filed it. We did encounter a bit of weirdness from the Departure controller, who instructed us "direct ZMBRO" at first, then whose second attempt was "fly heading 140 and resume the departure." Unfortunately the radial we needed to intercept was a 138, and we were already right-of-course -- but it was close enough that we were able to go with the flow and make it work.
Coming into Chicago we received a bunch of vectors for traffic sequencing, but fortunately the overall delay was minimal. We did end up being left at 7,000 past the point where we should have intercepted the glideslope at that altitude -- and then by the time we were descended further, we accidentally had 4,000 "armed" and the plane tried to level off there. That caused us to be a bit high and fast on the approach, but some judicious use of the "butt-flap" speedbrakes on the BAe helped us get things back under control. We broke out of the overcast layer somewhere around 1,200 feet and the last bit of the approach looked pretty stable. As we often do in this aircraft, though, we flared a bit too high above the pavement, and then plopped it down once the excess speed bled off.
We taxied into the terminal in darkness (having forgotten to dial the time back a few hours, as is our normal custom), but, rolled it back a bit so we could fly leg two in daylight. Our departure and climbout went basically as expected with no real notable issues. We noted that Pittsburgh was landing 28L and 32, and commented about how we forgot that Pittsburgh even had a crossing runway! But as expected, we were assigned 28L for our arrival. The controller gave us a pilot's discretion descent down to 10,000, and we planned to make that level by Elwood City VOR which lies 20 miles due north of the airport. Apparently the Center controller thought that was too late, as we were then given some additional vectors to make our descent. I got briefly caught out thinking that we didn't need our NAV radios anymore and began setting them up for our approach -- then got called upon to turn direct back toward the VOR before handed off. But we got things sorted out in short order.
Our flight automation seemed to have trouble keeping us on the glideslope through the overcast, so, I went ahead and took manual control and got things back on profile. That worked out fairly favorably and overall I was happy with the execution. On short final, though, things got a little dicier as we expereinced some pretty awful sim stutters. A custom freeware add-on for Pittsburgh allegedly smoothed out some terrain problems at the airport, but, did seem to cause quite a bit of lagging. That plus the gusty crosswind contributed to a pretty sloppy sideways touchdown and a fight to get the plane back near the centerline. ATC dropped off just as we began our taxi-in. But, we all survived to tell the tale, and to give away over $400 in prizes in celebration of our stream's continued success! -- Watch live at / slantalphaadventures